Four months after the release of It Ends With Us, Blake Lively sued Justin Baldoni, her co-star and director, for sexual harassment, asserting that he also lead a coordinated effort to destroy her professional reputation during the film’s rollout. In a legal complaint filed in late December, Lively noted that Baldoni enlisted the services of Melissa Nathan—a crisis PR specialist whose previous clients include one Johnny Depp—to help him do it.
It’s been a matter of public record for a while now that Depp manipulated the truth and weaponised the public’s distaste for complicated, independent women in order to win his 2022 defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard, painting her as abusive and unstable. The media war that Baldoni waged against Lively was similar, using various publicity and social media strategies to warp the narrative around the film in his favour.
Yet Lively’s complaint details the toxic work environment that Baldoni and producer Jamey Heath created while shooting. In early 2024, upon returning to the set of It Ends With Us following the guild strikes of the year before, Lively called a meeting with Baldoni and several of the film’s producers, asking, according to documents, that Baldoni and Heath stop “showing nude videos or images of women, including producer’s wife, to BL and/or her employees,” among other inappropriate behaviours, such as improvising kissing scenes. (She also requested the presence of an intimacy coordinator on set.) Elsewhere, the documents allege that “throughout filming, Mr. Baldoni and Mr. Heath invaded Ms. Lively’s privacy by entering her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding her infant child.” Baldoni apparently engaged Nathan’s help after he realised that Reynolds had blocked him on Instagram, hoping to get ahead of Lively’s on-set complaints becoming public.
Baldoni’s legal team has called the suit “shameful” and full of “categorically false accusations,” but at this point, I think we all owe Blake Lively an apology. As Nathan put it in one text message subpoenaed by Lively’s attorneys, “It’s actually sad because it just shows you [how] people really want to hate on women.”
Below, find a full timeline of the various accusations levelled between Lively and Baldoni, and see where Ryan Reynolds, Nathan’s PR firm, and more fit into the mess:
December 20, 2024: Lively files a sexual harassment complaint against Baldoni with the California Civil Rights Department
Lively’s original complaint accused Baldoni of sexual harassment during filming, as well as retaliation against Lively when she attempted to stand up against his alleged misbehaviour.
December 21, 2024: The New York Times publishes a lengthy investigation into the PR machine Baldoni summoned to help allegedly smear Lively
The same day it was reported that WME had also dropped Baldoni as a client, although the talent agency has publicly insisted that Lively and Reynolds weren’t behind its decision to drop Baldoni (despite the fact that Lively remains a WME client).
December 31, 2024: Lively formally sues Baldoni, his film studio Wayfarer, and his PR team
Although Lively had already gone public with her California Civil Rights Department complaint earlier in December, the lawsuit she filed on Tuesday in New York federal court specifically names Baldoni, Wayfarer, and PR representatives Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel for subjecting her to “further retaliation and attacks” after her participation in The New York Times story. “Ms. Lively has brought this litigation in New York, where much of the relevant activities described in the Complaint took place, but we reserve the right to pursue further action in other venues and jurisdictions as appropriate under the law,” said one of Lively’s attorneys on Tuesday.
December 31, 2024: Baldoni and his publicity team sue The New York Times for libel
Baldoni’s 87-page legal complaint, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that The New York Times relied “almost entirely” on Lively’s “unverified” narrative, also accusing her husband, Ryan Reynolds, of being “aggressive” toward Baldoni during a meeting in New York City. (It should be mentioned that said aggression was allegedly an accusation on Reynolds’s part that Baldoni had fat-shamed Lively, a practice that’s sadly still all too common in Hollywood.) Baldoni is attempting to sue The New York Times for $250 million in damages.
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
